reached into a cabinet behind him and pulled out a sliding shelf on which sat a bulkier unit. He turned a key next to the number pad and punched in a series of digits. Spinning his chair to face a big plate-glass window, he leaned back and propped his feet on the sill. A digital click in his ear traced the signal of the long-distance call. Crooking the telephone receiver against his shoulder, Pflanz picked up an India rubber ball from his desk, powerful fingers compressing the dense sphere as he watched the scene below him.
The California sun was still well above the western horizon. From his eighteenth-story aerie in McCord Tower, at the heart of Newport Center, Pflanz could see the late-afternoon surfers heading toward the beach, the diehards braving the cold December surf in wet suits. He shook his head as he watched all the cars with surfboard-laden roof racks wending their way along the Coast Highway. Despite the fact that he’d been based here for a decade now, he had never gotten used to the southern California life-style. “Laid-back” was not in Dieter Pflanz’s vocabulary. The daily sight of beaches packed with strapping young surfers and volleyball players only filled him with contempt. It was symptomatic of a society gone soft.
The telephone at the other end of the line began to ring as the connection was completed. Halfway through the third ring, it was picked up. “Hello?”
“It’s me. Going to scramble.”
“Roger.”
Pflanz punched a button under the telephone keypad. After a brief delay, a light began to flash on the unit. At the other end of the line, he knew, a similar light would be flashing. A long beep following a series of short ones confirmed that the scrambler was operational. From here on in, anyone trying to monitor the call would hear nothing but a piercing whine. Only the synchronized software of the two machines was capable of decoding the electronic gobbledygook passing across the connection.
“Okay,” Pflanz said. “We’re set.”
“I’ve been expecting your call. How’s it going?”
“We’re coming in tomorrow. There’s one stop en route—a charity thing. We arrive in D.C. in the evening. McCord sees the President on Friday.”
“I heard. He’s up to speed.”
“Good.”
“What about New Mexico?”
“It’s on for tonight.”
“Tonight? Jesus, Dieter! So soon?”
“We have no choice. Everything’s in place. Either we do it tonight or we miss the window of opportunity.”
“Are you sure about this? If anything goes wrong, this could blow up in our faces.”
Pflanz squeezed the rubber ball tighter. “Nothing’s going to go wrong, George. Not,” he added pointedly, “like that mess in Vienna.”
There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. “Hell, don’t talk to me about that. We’re still cleaning up.”
“What about the woman? She’s back in operation now?”
“She’s nothing to worry about.”
“She hasn’t made the connection?”
“No. She’s off the file and preoccupied with her family. Trust me—Mariah Bolt poses no threat to us.”
“She’d better not,” Pflanz growled. “All right, look—I’ll call you when I get in tomorrow.”
“No. Call me tonight, when you hear from New Mexico.”
“It’ll be late.”
“You’ve got my home number. Call. I’ll be up till I hear.”
“Roger.”
Pflanz cradled the receiver and closed the cabinet housing the secure phone. Then he leaned back and watched the sun sinking lower toward the Pacific.
A big man, with a hawk’s beak for a nose and hands like bulldozer shovels, Pflanz still looked at forty-nine as if he belonged in jungle fatigues instead of the corporate uniform that he mostly wore these days. Despite the suit, though, no one would mistake him for anything but a security man—the ever-watchful, hooded eyes missed nothing. His massive shoulders hunched forward, giving him the appearance of a bird of prey poised for takeoff.
He had spent a quarter of a century mounting complex security operations, first as a CIA covert operative, then as chief of security for McCord Industries. McCord’s head office was in Newport Beach, California, with subsidiaries in eleven American cities and fourteen other branches worldwide. It was a multifaceted business with diverse interests ranging from electronics to construction engineering, with dozens of difficult foreign projects that sometimes demanded special arrangements to ensure the safety of the employees. And the extracurricular activities of the company’s president and CEO, Angus McCord, added yet another dimension to Pflanz’s security duties.
You have to pay attention to detail, he told himself again—even the tiniest. That’s the key to success. You can’t leave anything to chance because it’s the little things, the loose ends, that are sure to foul you up. Despite the assurances on the other end of the line a moment earlier, he’d been convinced all along that the Vienna episode had left too many loose ends—loose ends that he himself had already begun to tidy up.
Rollie Burton’s battered green Toyota was parked across the road and down the street a little way from Mariah’s condo in McLean, but the town house was still dark. He had lost her in heavy rush-hour traffic outside the nursing home, but from the look of things, he had beaten her here. When he finally spotted the Volvo coming up the street, the sight of two figures in the front seat gave him a jolt. He peered closely as the car passed under a streetlight. Oh, shit, he thought—she’s got a kid. The voice had conveniently neglected to mention that.
The garage door began to rise as the Volvo approached the driveway. Burton slumped in his seat, tugging a baseball cap low over his eyes, watching the car pull into the garage. The brake lights flashed and then went dark as she killed the engine. Inside the lit garage he could see an interior door leading into the town house. When the automatic door began to drop, Burton glanced at the sweep hand on his watch: It took about five seconds to close.
The garage was on the side of the house facing the street, he noted, taking careful stock of the landscape. There was a cedar hedge running along one side of the driveway, with open lawn extending down to a cross street on the other. No prying neighbors. He nodded in satisfaction—good cover and a quick escape route.
The front door was around the corner of the town house, facing a footpath. It was part of a network of well-treed walkways and ravines that ran throughout the parklike condominium complex, radiating like a spiderweb from a recreation center at the hub. The trees were mostly evergreens, pine and spruce, casting deep shadows. Good possibilities there, too, he thought. Maybe she was a jogger. Burton loved joggers.
Then he pursed his lips, weighing the problem of her daughter. Nobody was paying him for the kid, and he had no intention of getting caught. But if he ever was—God forbid—he knew what happened to prison inmates who offed kids. On the other hand, he could wait forever to catch her alone at home.
First the reporter, now this—I don’t need this kind of grief, he thought, exasperated. Why can’t things ever be as simple as they
